Back wheel starts in the Pacific Ocean... Today it really all began. We all just fought back and forth over who is going to write the blog post for day 1 because it’s a struggle to sit down and really put it into words. I’ll take a crack at it:
After a surprisingly efficient process of breaking camp, we downed a sizable breakfast (how are we already hungry!?), met up with Patches, Jamie, and Bryan, and then headed down to the beach. We all fiddled with our bike computers to set them to 0 miles ridden for 0 hours and 0 minutes, then we backed up and dipped our back wheel in the Pacific ocean. It was ceremonious, but almost hard to really let the reality of it sink it. My gut tells me that it’ll sink in once our front wheel makes sweet contact with the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of this beautiful country.
After the wheel soaking ceremony we rode on over to the ferry docks where we met up with some supporters that were eager to ride the first few miles of our journey with us. This included the Chief of Police of Anacortes, some Harley Escorts, and Kevin Meenaghan who has been undeniable support in working out logistics thus far. We were super thankful to have Kevin leading us through and out of Anacortes as it was turn after turn of confusing directions that none of us guiltily made an effort to memorize.
Patches, Jamie, and Bryan, the three R2R representatives, were super helpful with throwing out tips and pointers to help us ride more efficiently. Today for all 66 miles we made an effort to ride as a pack. All 8 of us stayed together (with positive heel biting from the R2R reps) for the entire ride learning how helpful close drafting and team camaraderie can be. We held an astonishing pace of 18-20mph for quite some time which is faster than we’ve ever been able to maintain during training rides this Spring.
When we pulled into Concrete, WA (pop. 705!) to be greeted by mayor Jason Miller and some helpers hosting an entire BBQ for us! It was awesome…food is food on a long ride - we’ll take it! Some potato salad none of us will forget. Thanks, Concrete!
Food was so good that we were generous to ourselves and you could say we felt it on the next 10 miles that took us into a beautiful campground at the base of the North Cascades. We’re sleeping under the 5400 ft elevation gain that we’re about to climb tomorrow. Here we gooooooo!
xoxo,
Jade
Lightning Round: “most memorable part of today”
Oliver - Eddie bumping “yeah” by Usher in the R2R support vehicle
Jacob - posterizing (dunking a basketball into a portable hoop behind someone) Webster mid serious convo
Jamie - amount of food consumed in day 1
George - how flat the route was
Eddie - driving down the road and constantly looking at the HUGE mountains on the side of the road
After a surprisingly efficient process of breaking camp, we downed a sizable breakfast (how are we already hungry!?), met up with Patches, Jamie, and Bryan, and then headed down to the beach. We all fiddled with our bike computers to set them to 0 miles ridden for 0 hours and 0 minutes, then we backed up and dipped our back wheel in the Pacific ocean. It was ceremonious, but almost hard to really let the reality of it sink it. My gut tells me that it’ll sink in once our front wheel makes sweet contact with the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of this beautiful country.
After the wheel soaking ceremony we rode on over to the ferry docks where we met up with some supporters that were eager to ride the first few miles of our journey with us. This included the Chief of Police of Anacortes, some Harley Escorts, and Kevin Meenaghan who has been undeniable support in working out logistics thus far. We were super thankful to have Kevin leading us through and out of Anacortes as it was turn after turn of confusing directions that none of us guiltily made an effort to memorize.
Patches, Jamie, and Bryan, the three R2R representatives, were super helpful with throwing out tips and pointers to help us ride more efficiently. Today for all 66 miles we made an effort to ride as a pack. All 8 of us stayed together (with positive heel biting from the R2R reps) for the entire ride learning how helpful close drafting and team camaraderie can be. We held an astonishing pace of 18-20mph for quite some time which is faster than we’ve ever been able to maintain during training rides this Spring.
When we pulled into Concrete, WA (pop. 705!) to be greeted by mayor Jason Miller and some helpers hosting an entire BBQ for us! It was awesome…food is food on a long ride - we’ll take it! Some potato salad none of us will forget. Thanks, Concrete!
Food was so good that we were generous to ourselves and you could say we felt it on the next 10 miles that took us into a beautiful campground at the base of the North Cascades. We’re sleeping under the 5400 ft elevation gain that we’re about to climb tomorrow. Here we gooooooo!
xoxo,
Jade
Lightning Round: “most memorable part of today”
Oliver - Eddie bumping “yeah” by Usher in the R2R support vehicle
Jacob - posterizing (dunking a basketball into a portable hoop behind someone) Webster mid serious convo
Jamie - amount of food consumed in day 1
George - how flat the route was
Eddie - driving down the road and constantly looking at the HUGE mountains on the side of the road
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